Living my best life, The best way I know how

Being a Homeowner – Part Two:

Well, another week of being a homeowner and another challenge presented.

This week our air conditioner went out. Honestly, at least this problem we were somewhat expecting. The unit is 25+ years old, and was bound to not make it through an entire summer.

Fortunately, the weather is being more than cooperative! I mean seriously, we slept with the windows down and the fans on last night and I woke up freezing. It was awesome.

I wish every summer in Oklahoma was like this!

Anyway, I won’t bore you with air conditioner complaints until we find out how bad the problem really is and then learn that it can’t be fixed until the temps actually do soar to the mid 100’s.

Instead, I give you a few before and after photos, as promised. The only problem is, I tend to forget to take before pictures, so I don’t have as many as one would hope. I’ll try to do better in the future – still plenty of floral wallpaper to be torn down and rooms to decorate.

Our living room, for some reason, had five different shades of white between the walls, shelf, fireplace and ceiling. Yeesh. Here’s the boring cream-colored fireplace and white bookshelf before we painted. (Why anyone would ever paint natural stone is beyond me, but because it was painted so well and therefore next-to-impossible to get back to its original state, we opted to paint it a more natural color.)

Here it is after – a deep gray. And sans 1972 gold fireplace hearth.

It still needs a nice big mantle that I can fill with fall, Halloween and Christmas decorations, but I have a couple more months to impatiently wait for that. (And yes, there’s a difference between fall and Halloween decorations. Cannot wait.)

Note, we still haven’t bought living room furniture yet. Or sunroom furniture. Or “formal living” or fourth bedroom furniture. What I’m getting at is our house is fairly empty, folks. But patience is a virtue, right? One day we’ll WIN that lottery and be able to make our house look exactly how we want it. ‘Til then, it’s two chairs and a tube TV on a too-small TV stand.

Moving on…

Here’s the backyard while we were in the middle of chopping down bushes and vines and digging up gardening bricks (I’m sure those have an actual name, but I don’t know it.)

Three truck loads of limbs, leaves and shrubs and three trips to the green waste dump later, and it looks a little more like this…

Talk about an ego boost, by the way. If you’re a woman and need to feel like an unstoppable force, go with your husband to unload a truck full or three of green waste. You’ll likely be the only woman within miles, and get confused/admiring looks from all the big burly men covered in dirt who are super impressed that you’re not concerned about chipping your nails. (I was, of course, which is why I had on gloves and re-painted my nails at the end of the weekend.) But they didn’t know that, so for all intents and purposes, I was superwoman.

Before fall, I also plan to incorporate a small herb garden (already in the works, thanks, husband!) and a fire pit along the lines of this one for the backyard, so I can spend every waking moment next to it for as long as the weather allows:

Last up today is the dining room! It was drab and boring and white. Like everything else in the house (beside those floral bathrooms).

And now…

One more, just for fun:

It still needs some decor on the walls, but for now I’m more than pleased with the transformation. And the chandelier is even growing on me.

Until next time, here’s hoping our A/C is completely irreparable and therefore 100 percent covered by our home warranty to be replaced by a brand new one before Oklahoma figures out it’s the middle of summer and the temps get back to their normal miserable self!